Late Night Linux

It’s our 2025 review of Linux and open source news including great gaming news, the impact of AI, the disappointments from Mozilla, the year of Wayland on the desktop, the politics of open source, Intel’s lack of interest, and wins for KDE.

Gaming

Steam Machine, controller, VR headset incoming from Valve

Steam Deck LCD production is ending

AI bullshit

Open source devs say AI crawlers dominate traffic, forcing blocks on entire countries

Wikimedia Foundation bemoans AI bot bandwidth burden

ardour.org has banned 1.2M distinct IP addresses for trying to slurp from our git repository

Introducing CC Signals: A New Social Contract for the Age of AI

You should enforce your own existing licenses against AI mass crawling

Anubis guards gates against hordes of LLM bot crawlers

FSF calls Anubis malware

It seems like the AI crawlers learned how to solve the Anubis challenges

Mozilla

Updates on Mozilla’s Leadership and Growth Planning

Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox

An update on our Terms of Use

Firefox deletes promise to never sell personal data, asks users not to panic

Investing in what moves the internet forward

When I say that I can’t recommend third-party forks of either Firefox or Chrome for real world use, this kind of thing is why

Firefox is fine. The people running it are not

Mozilla Slammed Over Battery-Draining “Garbage” AI in Firefox

Firefox Adds CoPilot Chatbot, New Tab Widgets in Nightly Builds

Introducing AI, the Firefox way: A look at what we’re working on and how you can help shape it

Rewiring Mozilla: Doing for AI what we did for the web

Mozilla’s next chapter: Building the world’s most trusted software company

Wayland

Fedora 43 Cleared To Ship With Wayland-Only GNOME

GNOME Dropping X11 Support May Complicate Next Ubuntu LTS

Ubuntu 25.10 drops support for GNOME on Xorg

Ubuntu 25.10 and Fedora 43 to drop X11 in GNOME editions

An update on the X11 GNOME Session Removal

Wayback Is Now Hosted On FreeDesktop.org

Wayback 0.3 released!

GNOME Mutter Now “Completely Drops The Whole X11 Backend”

KDE Going all-in on a Wayland future

Politics

The price of software freedom is eternal politics

Framework flame war erupts over Linux controversy

PSF Gets a Donor Surge After Rejecting Anti-DEI Federal Grant

Intel

All good things come to an end: Shutting down Clear Linux OS

Intel’s Open-Source Strategy Is Changing At Odds With The Ethos Of Open-Source

The Death Of Clear Linux, Other Intel Linux Engineering Setbacks In 2025

KDE

KDE Highlights from 2025

Tailscale

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Good news for custom Android ROMs, Rust is here to stay in the kernel, an open source success story in Germany, and a new version of elementary OS is out. Plus discoveries is back including better Firefox history, migrating from Windows to Linux, automating telescopes, turning old tablets into clocks, and more.

News

Good news for custom ROMs: Google just released the Android 16 QPR2

The (successful) end of the kernel Rust experiment

New Linux Patch Confirms: Rust Experiment Is Done, Rust Is Here To Stay

Goodbye, Microsoft: Schleswig-Holstein relies on Open Source and saves millions

elementary OS 8.1 Available Now

Discoveries

Better History

Operese

commodore64 is back!?

Making History: Signing the Commodore Contract + C64 Ultimate Production Update

PiFinder

Fullscreen Clock

Clasp

Tailscale

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The Steam machine will use an older HDMI standard because of arbitrary rules, more details about running X86 Windows games on Arm Linux, and the Steam Controller lives on. Plus Calibre is adding “AI”, and we laugh at another LLM.

News

Why won’t Steam Machine support HDMI 2.1? Digging in on the display standard drama

Steam Machine today, Steam Phones tomorrow

Remember Google Stadia? Steam finally made its gamepad worth rescuing

Talk to your Fedora system with the linux-mcp-server!

Calibre adds AI “discussion” feature

Because the Calibre ebook library software just acquired AI garbage it has *already* been forked

AI and GNOME Shell Extensions

Tailscale

Tailscale is an easy to deploy, zero-config, no-fuss VPN that allows you to build simple networks across complex infrastructure. Go to tailscale.com/lnl and try Tailscale out for free for up to 100 devices and 3 users, with no credit card required. Use code LATENIGHTLINUX for three free months of any Tailscale paid plan.

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Arduino’s new ToS has some people worried, some projects are starting to move away from GitHub for technical reasons, Raspberry Pi has a new model and prices are going up because of RAM costs, great news for OpenPrinting, old text adventure games get open source, and Joe’s foldable phone breaks in an unexpected way.

News

Arduino’s new terms of service worries hobbyists ahead of Qualcomm acquisition

Migrating from GitHub to Codeberg

Migrating Dillo from GitHub

1GB Raspberry Pi 5 now available at $45, and memory-driven price rises

Sovereign Tech Agency is investing in OpenPrinting

Preserving code that shaped generations: Zork I, II, and III go Open Source

1Password Extended Access Management

Take the first step to better security by securing your team’s credentials. Find out more at 1password.com/latenightlinux and start securing every login.

Tailscale

Tailscale is an easy to deploy, zero-config, no-fuss VPN that allows you to build simple networks across complex infrastructure. Go to tailscale.com/lnl and try Tailscale out for free for up to 100 devices and 3 users, with no credit card required. Use code LATENIGHTLINUX for three free months of any Tailscale paid plan.

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KDE Plasma is finally moving on from X11, Tuxedo Computers abandons their Arm laptop project, Mozilla completely loses the room, but there might be a glimmer of hope.

News

Going all-in on a Wayland future

Help us reach the inflection point

Discontinuation of ARM Notebook with Snapdragon X Elite SoC

Linux Device Trees For Cancelled Products? Don’t “Waste Time”

Rewiring Mozilla: Doing for AI what we did for the web

Mozilla’s ‘Rewiring’ to AI – Saving the Web or Saving Itself?

Servo Announces Sponsorship Tiers To Get More Organizations Backing This Browser Engine

Tailscale

Tailscale is an easy to deploy, zero-config, no-fuss VPN that allows you to build simple networks across complex infrastructure. Go to tailscale.com/lnl and try Tailscale out for free for up to 100 devices and 3 users, with no credit card required. Use code LATENIGHTLINUX for three free months of any Tailscale paid plan.

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Ubuntu get 15 years of support, Google finally releases Android source code and backs down on “sideloading”, more steps to move on from X11, IKEA launches a range of Matter IoS gear, and more.

News

Canonical expands total coverage for Ubuntu LTS releases to 15 years with Legacy add-on

The wait is over: Android 16 QPR1’s source code is now available on AOSP

Google will let expert Android users to sideload all apps

GNOME Mutter Now “Completely Drops The Whole X11 Backend”

PSF Gets a Donor Surge After Rejecting Anti-DEI Federal Grant

Introducing Blender Lab

IKEA launches new smart home range with 21 Matter-compatible products

Ikea’s new smart home collection is entirely Matter-compatible

KDE Korner

Help us reach the inflection point

Google Summer of Code 2025 Conclusion – KDE Mentorship

Tailscale

Tailscale is an easy to deploy, zero-config, no-fuss VPN that allows you to build simple networks across complex infrastructure. Go to tailscale.com/lnl and try Tailscale out for free for up to 100 devices and 3 users, with no credit card required. Use code LATENIGHTLINUX for three free months of any Tailscale paid plan.

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We are excited and enthusiastic about Valve’s new Linux hardware, and then angry and disappointed about Mozilla’s latest nonsense.

News

Steam Machine, controller, VR headset incoming from Valve

Say hi to Kit

Introducing AI, the Firefox way: A look at what we’re working on and how you can help shape it

Mozilla Connect thread

End of Japanese community

Web API for AI Agents

Tailscale

Tailscale is an easy to deploy, zero-config, no-fuss VPN that allows you to build simple networks across complex infrastructure. Go to tailscale.com/lnl and try Tailscale out for free for up to 100 devices and 3 users, with no credit card required. Use code LATENIGHTLINUX for three free months of any Tailscale paid plan.

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What we all learned at the recent Ubuntu Summit including open source as a counter to insular nationalism, Canonical taking RISC-V very seriously, TPM-backed full disk encryption getting a lot easier, what the post-AI-bubble will probably look like, and more.

We mentioned the Rubik Pi 3.

Tailscale

Tailscale is an easy to deploy, zero-config, no-fuss VPN that allows you to build simple networks across complex infrastructure. Go to tailscale.com/lnl and try Tailscale out for free for up to 100 devices and 3 users, with no credit card required. Use code LATENIGHTLINUX for three free months of any Tailscale paid plan.

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Mark Shuttleworth recently spoke to us about what he’s apprehensive and excited about in the tech world, and more. Plus in the news: Ubuntu Unity needs help to survive, the Python Software Foundation turns down a large government grant, Fedora allows AI contributions, SUSE goes all in on AI, and KDE hits its fundraising goal.

News

Linux Matters

Regarding Ubuntu Unity and a call for help

The Python Software Foundation has withdrawn a $1.5 million proposal to US government grant program

Fedora agrees policy allowing AI-assisted contributions

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 16 – AI-Ready, Long-Term Support

SUSE Goes Agentic: The First Linux That Thinks for Itself

Awesome fundraiser news: €53,000 raised!

Mark Shuttleworth

Joe sat down with Mark at the recent Ubuntu Summit to discuss what he’s apprehensive and excited about in the tech world, what we should look forward to in Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, and more.

1Password Extended Access Management

Take the first step to better security for your team by securing credentials and protecting every application — even unmanaged shadow IT.

Tailscale

Tailscale is an easy to deploy, zero-config, no-fuss VPN that allows you to build simple networks across complex infrastructure. Go to tailscale.com/lnl and try Tailscale out for free for up to 100 devices and 3 users, with no credit card required. Use code LATENIGHTLINUX for three free months of any Tailscale paid plan.

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Intel is contributing less to open source and it could easily backfire, Qualcomm buys Arduino and we have concerns, KDE turns 29, Germans are doing excellent work moving towards Linux, and good news for those running Linux on an Amiga.

News

Intel rethinking how it contributes to open source community

Intel’s Open-Source Strategy Is Changing At Odds With The Ethos Of Open-Source

Qualcomm to Acquire Arduino

Arduino’s got a new job: selling chips for its new owner

Happy Birthday to KDE

Schleswig-Holstein waves auf Wiedersehen to Microsoft stack

Linux Patches Enable PCI Support For The Amiga 4000

Tailscale

Tailscale is an easy to deploy, zero-config, no-fuss VPN that allows you to build simple networks across complex infrastructure. Go to tailscale.com/lnl and try Tailscale out for free for up to 100 devices and 3 users, with no credit card required. Use code Linux25 for three free months of any Tailscale paid plan.

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